Intellectual Property Law

Voters using touch-screen voting machines for early voting in two West Virginia counties have complained that when they tried to vote for Democratic candidates, the machine registered their vote for other Republican candidates instead.

At least three voters in Jackson County, West Virginia, complained that when they tried to cast a vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the machine recorded a check in the box for Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

One of the voters reported the same problem in the governor and state senate races. In each case, the voter tried to cast a vote for a Democratic candidate, but the machine marked his vote for the Republican challenger instead. Another voter who tried to cast votes for two state Supreme Court candidates said the machine cancelled one of her choices twice before it finally accepted her selection.

Three other voters in Putnam County say they had the same problem.

Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright blamed voters for not touching the screen properly and said that 400 other voters had cast ballots on the machine with no problem. But he agreed to recalibrate the machine's screen after the Secretary of State's office contacted him.

Putnam County's election director complained to the Charleston Gazette that there are "so many negative stories out there and not enough positive ones. We want people to vote. People need to know the facts."

Jackson County uses a touch-screen machine made by Election Systems & Software for early voting. The county uses touch-screen machines with a voter-verified paper trail at polling places on election day.

Putnam County also uses ES&S machines but offers early voters the option of voting on a touch-screen machine or an optical scan machine, which uses a full-size paper ballot. On election day, the county uses optical-scan machines at polling places.

Earlier this year during primaries, Faulkner County, Arkansas reported a different kind of vote-flipping problem involving ES&S touch-screen machines. Two touch-screen machines allocated votes for one race to another race entirely -- a race that wasn't even on the ballot.

ES&S's tabulation software was blamed for another vote-flipping problem in Lawrence County, Ohio last year. In that case, tallies printed from ES&S machines allocated 374 votes to Bill Robinson and 170 votes to Allan Blankenship in a race for Hamilton Township trustee. But the tabulation program at county headquarters flipped the numbers and gave 170 to Robinson and 374 to Blankenship.